Lawyers suing the San Diego County Sheriff's Department are asking a federal judge to compel Sheriff Kelly Martinez to submit to a deposition and answer questions about jail practices and conditions under oath.

According to a declaration filed in San Diego federal court, Martinez has not been made available over several weeks for a formal deposition.

The legal team representing men and women in sheriff's custody say Martinez's testimony is critical to establishing responsibility for deficiencies in the jails' healthcare system, a lack of adequate facilities and continuing deaths behind bars.

"Sheriff Martinez, as the elected official running the jail system, has direct and personal knowledge of steps, if any, that her administration is taking to address the eight claims in plaintiffs' complaint," attorney Gay Grunfeld wrote in a declaration seeking to compel the sheriff to testify.

"Plaintiffs cannot obtain this information through other deponents since there has been tremendous turnover in the upper ranks of the department since January 2021," she wrote.

Neither Martinez, who was appointed undersheriff in early February 2021 and elected sheriff in November 2022, nor the Sheriff's Department responded to a request for comment.

The motion to compel comes as the Sheriff's Department late Sunday reported its fifth in-custody death so far this year.

San Diego County jails have recorded one of the highest mortality rates across California for years. The Sheriff's Department has repeatedly been sued by relatives of people who died in custody and paid millions of dollars in damages in recent years.

The lawsuit initially filed by a formerly incarcerated man named Darryl Dunsmore seeks to force San Diego County to comply with the federal Americans with Disabilities Act when housing people with disabilities. It has since expanded to cover all previous, current and future prisoners to ensure they are properly housed, fed and treated.

In an April 9 email to Sheriff's Department attorneys, the plaintiffs' legal team said it understood that Martinez is not making day-to-day operational decisions inside the jails. But they did say the testimony is necessary and offered to limit the deposition to four hours.

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